In an apparatus or facility which processes paper strips, in particular an apparatus into which bills or bank notes are inserted as payment, such as automatic lending machines, it is necessary to collect bank notes. For example, a number of game media lending machines for lending game media used for playing games are installed in game parlors. Collecting of bank notes which have been inserted into the game media lending machines is carried out. There are problems in that collecting of bank notes from lending machines is troublesome and accidental loss and/or stealing of bank notes is liable to occur. Therefore, a transporting apparatus which accepts the inserted bank notes and transports them to a destination such as cash box is required for several game media lending machines.
For example, in game parlors, a plurality of game machines and a plurality of game media lending machines are arranged into one group. A plurality of the groups are arranged into an island. For each group, there is provided a transporting apparatus for collecting the bank notes inserted into a plurality of game media lending machines to one position.
Such type of paper strip transporting apparatus including drive and driven pulleys and a belt arranged between and around the pulleys have been heretofore used. A plurality of transporting rollers are disposed along the belt and between the drive and driven pulleys. This causes the bank notes to be sandwiched between the rollers and the belt and to be transported together with the belt by the frictional force thereof. The transporting rollers are disposed in pressure contact with the belt for bringing the paper strip into pressure contact with the belt.
The transporting rollers are constantly in pressure contact with the belt in the conventional transporting apparatus. Accordingly, the transporting rollers are constantly driven to rotate by the belt independently of presence or absence of the bank note. Therefore, there is a problem that the belt is liable to break due to wear of the portion which is in contact with the transporting rollers. In other words, there is a problem in that the durability of the belt is low. The transporting rollers have a similar problem of wear.
Noise which is generated due to continuous rotation of all transporting rollers is not negligible.